


Tell Us A Little Bit, But Not Too Much

by MelvisGrey



Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Animal Death (Alluded not shown), Canon Backstory, Comfort/Angst, Drabble Collection, F/M, Friendship, Headcanon Accepted, Headcanon Backstory, PTSDan, Post-Canon, Season 2, Season 3, The Irons Crew, post-S3, sleeping, tagged as updated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:20:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26261053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelvisGrey/pseuds/MelvisGrey
Summary: A collection of character study drabblesMost recent: Dan enjoys a rainy day in New York.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. So All I Have Are Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Dan starts sleeping on his stomach in college. Then the surgery happens.

In college, Dan started sleeping on his stomach as he’d spend countless nights with a book propped up on a pillow, reading it as he listened to music. He’d wake up each morning entangled in his headphone wires, book either discarded on the floor or its pages folded underneath his face. The nights where he didn’t read he’d still find himself having navigated onto his stomach in the middle of the night. 

It’s not something you think about too hard, what position you sleep in. You simply sleep in whichever way you find most comfortable. Dan doesn’t register he’s a stomach sleeper.

Then the surgery happens. He doesn’t think about it even then. The first night he’s too tired and in pain to register which way he lies down in bed. He gradually gets used to the new sensations of his body and the pain subsides. It’s only then does he notice how he naturally turns to move onto his stomach.

It shouldn’t be a big deal, lying on your back. Yet it cuts something deep in his chest and he starts to laugh. He laughs so hard he cries. He isn’t upset that he can no longer lie on his stomach. He never really cared; still, he quietly sobs himself to sleep, upset at himself for being more saddened at the fact he is annoyed at not being able to lie on his stomach than the reason he can no longer do so. 

-

It's been years since he first took the job with LMG. New York is so different now, yet still exactly the same, a stasis he is familiar with.

He's been sleeping on a couch, something he never could have done before unless he decided to go with the flow and have a few drinks so he could learn how it felt walking to the bathroom with a splitting headache, only to find out how bad frat boys were at drawing phalluses.

It's small, cozy one could say. He sleeps slightly curled up, tilted almost on his side. Then Clara buys a futon. She insists on it, despite Dan protesting that he'll get his own place soon.

It's a very nice futon.

One night, he pulls out his old weathered copy of _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,_ earbuds in and filling the inside of his skull with gooey ambient beats reminiscent of an alien heart. It lulls him to sleep.

When he wakes up, the book is on the floor and he has to untangle himself from the wires. Red lines are indented on his cheek where he laid on his phone.

He snorts.

Then chuckles.

Then wakes Clara with worryingly loud laughter.

He can't remember the last time he slept like this.

It feels right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like thinking about small things like sleeping positions (but to be honest, started thinking about this after getting a Nectar mattress ad). 
> 
> Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you so much for reading!


	2. You'll Fit So Nicely, You'll Keep Me Intact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan can't stand being recorded when he returns home.

Dan can’t stand being recorded when he returns home. The tape recorder is no longer embedded in him; but, on certain nights he can still feel the strange tugging in his chest, a phantom pain that haunts him.

Clara holds his hand as he sniffles into a mug of tea. It’s gone. It’s not there, he knows this- he’s free of its grasp in this world, HIS world.

He starts sleeping on the couch.

Clara doesn’t protest.

He’s never liked phone calls. The anxiety for them only increases. Making appointments is a monumental task, one he follows with trips to the store so he can eat and watch whatever horrid thing is airing on television and hope that it distracts from the thrumming in his veins. It feels like radio static.

He falls in love with weighted blankets.

One night he rips the car radio from Clara’s car. He doesn’t remember anything except how it felt falling from his fingers and onto the ground in a clatter of plastic and wires.

She doesn’t get mad.

It’s replaced with a tray that holds her phone. She doesn’t play anything when they carpool. He appreciates the silence.

Finding a job is impossible. Audio was his passion, his life, his comfort- now it’s a curse. Cassettes run rampant his dreams, his nightmares, his moments alone. He can still hear the rewinding of tape echo in his brain.

He invests in earplugs.

It takes months before he can stand to listen to music again. The subway helps; he doesn’t recognize the music that plays there, since it was released while he was away.

He never liked pop punk, but it doesn’t make his skin crawl as badly anymore.

His old band contacts him and it takes everything in him to agree to meet. The mic feels like lead when he picks it up. He screams until his voice is raw with strain and rattles his skull. He can’t hear the drums. But he can feel them. Good God, can he feel them.

He puts the disc in a drawer and lets it collect dust.

There is a box of vinyls that gets dropped off at his door. His old landlord brings the CDs later. They sit in the corner like an ominous threat.

He plays an album he got from his dad as a birthday present. The nostalgia is enough to stifle his unease.

He plays it on loop.

Music helps him fall back into routine. His CD player becomes a permanent fixture in his life. Over the sound of melodic chimes, he can hear the rhythmic scratching of the pigeons’ feet on the pavement.

He samples it.

It sounds like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first little drabble I wrote with the purpose of being a fic on tumblr. The chapter title comes from the track I wrote to- "Human" by Dodie
> 
> Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you so much for reading!


	3. How Can You Dream In The Doorway, Without Ever Going In?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rats. It was always the rats.

Rats.

It was always the rats.

Park management was a career choice Jacob had never truly wanted. It was convenient, it paid the bills, it was work. While the park had a certain appeal to it (a haven of greenery, like another world in the maze of pavement and tall towering constructs of metal, glass, and masonry, he had described it once in a passing conversation), he found the daily routine monotonous and limiting.

There was no passion to his actions, nothing that drove him to fulfill his duties. 

There were, however, rats.

There were always rats in the city. They thrived there. The park was no exception.

Trapping them was a part of his duties; and it was the only one that gave him that blooming warmth in his chest that one could call love.

He loved those rats.

He loved what he could make them.

Visser was a strange enough place that no one batted an eye when Jacob would haul a cage of rats into his apartment. 

The building’s melody was his muzak, its song a blanket over the rodents’ screams.

Samuel’s prolonged stare and slight nod is all the approval he needs to keep pursuing his own music, a story told in the sounds of flesh knitted into metal and wire and fur and leather and equipment.

Jacob likes to think it is what led to Samuel’s eventual apotheosis.

His apartment is exchanged for a lab.

And for once, he feels passion for his work.

He meets Caroline.

“Can you do something with this? Oh, I should correct that statement- what can you do with this? I know very well what you are capable of. Lets see if you do.” Samuel smiles with all of his teeth.

He preens at the attention.

The hollowing is an undeniable success.

When she sings in the halls, it produces thoughts of a forgotten time. 

It discomforts him.

He finds more rats.

He hears Dan for the first time and finds a new muse.

He gets more pieces.

He hears talk of getting to meet Dan and makes plans.

He gathers more parts.

He hears his screams over and over in his head like the chorus of a one-hit wonder.

He has never been more proud of his craft.

“Can I give you a nickname or something?”

Rat.

He thinks the title suits him well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really respect Rat, but he is certainly an interesting character. I would love to study him in more depth one day. 
> 
> This was written to my Rat playlist on Spotify, but the chapter title is from "Not Your Concern" by The Hush Sound!
> 
> Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. Thank you so much for reading!


	4. Maybe It's Crashing Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His tears melded with the salt of the ocean. It filled it further.

"Let me show you how to fish, son."

His dad was never a fisherman. At best, it was a cultivated hobby. His dad was a crate hauler. He steered away from wheeled vehicles and automobiles and traded them for ferries and ships. Lou recounted days spent on the ocean, his dad yapping at him to help untangle nets and carry boxes when he lingered at the bow, letting the salty air soften the roots of his hair and tangle split ends into sailor knots.

When his dad parted ways with his mum, he couldn't blame her for tossing his things to the curb. Lou made sure to grab whatever he liked before it was carried off in bins and sacks.

His fingers could still trace the grain pattern of the piece of driftwood he kept on his desk. He'd find himself instinctively following the sweeping dips and twists as he walked along the hull. The Irons groaned in displeasure, unaccepting of the foreign touch. He apologized under his breath and returned to his quarters. The mattress squealed as his weight pressed into it, the sea rocking him to sleep like the arms of his mother.

It felt safe. It felt natural.

It made him forget what her shirt fabric even was.

Teddy had been a hard man (being?) to bargain with. Despite being a stuffed animal, he was quite possessive of the Irons lower levels. That was his place to wander. It was only after a lot of prodding and a few pints that he could convince the bear to give a tour.

"Hey, there's this guy I know that could really help out around here." He grunted. "Need someone to help pull weight around here."

Xkryxx was an old acquaintance and a welcome member of the crew. A right proper and articulate Plantmet. The Irons had never felt more cared for.

And the music. By gods, the music he played was pure magic. Lou had a rough time trying to remember a time before Xkryxx's songs.

He was having trouble remembering a lot of things.

It was easier to say he never had parents in the first place.

Sonder was a unit of pure muscle and soft inquisitions. The sails became their trapeze. Watching them work was like watching a dance, a flutter of fabric and a tugging of ropes, pulleys pulled taut and wire giving way to their practiced routine.

It was difficult to avoid scuffles as their targets increased in value. Cuts, scrapes, bruises, twisted nerves- they needed something more than hasty splints and rough bandages.

Victoria "It's just Vic" was a no nonsense surgeon, a trained academic, and a godsend for the crew. No injury was something that could not be fixed. Teddy was soft and pliant under her touch. Xkryxx was tended to like a garden and a fortress. Lou and Sonder were cake walks to the doctor.

It was only a matter of time before her skills were needed elsewhere.

Chris could patch things up, sure, but that was not the only thing she was capable of. The Irons crew had always been a family unit. However, the ship only really felt like a home when her bubbling laugh could be heard.

She brought something they desperately needed- fun. Amusement. Empathy. Undying loyalty.

Her leaving left a hole bigger than any canon could dream to make.

"You better remember us."

Lou returned to the bow, wind whipping his ponytail around like a loose tether, a breeze tickling the whiskers peppering his face.

The Dolphinbirds' song sounded like crying.

Or was it Lou's?

His tears melded with the salt of the ocean. It filled it further.

Her return was met with a chorus of the crew's sobs.

She could not remember them.

But Lou could not blame her.

His old home was faded and blurry like a soaked photograph.

Their story would become an entirely new album.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lou may be stupid, but I love him dearly. What a lad.
> 
> This chapter was written to (and got the namesake from) "Half Mast" by Empire of the Sun.
> 
> Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you so much for reading!


	5. I Could Touch The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan plays guitar. Dan plays tapes.

_“Just play the guitar.”_

Dan swallows audibly, mouth gone dry, and he nods as he meets his band mates' gazes.

“Okay. I’m sorry-”

“Stop that shit, man. We get you want to make it all, fancy hipster shit but this a fucking garage band. We’re not going for a Platinum or aiming for the indie art scene.”

“But I-”

“You don’t write the songs. You sing, and you play the guitar, and you mix.”

“Um. Yeah. Okay.”

_“Just play the guitar. Don’t overthink it.”_

His heart is hammering in his chest as he strums and feels the vibrations tingle over his fingertips.

It itches.

_“Just play the guitar.”_

The thin strips of metal that make up his new hand sit uneven on the strings, not wide enough to fully wrap around the neck, stiff and cold as he digs them into the frets.

His hand shakes and the pick slips from his grasp, falling into the sound hole and the sound of it is so quiet; but Rat’s whine is so loud.

There is more scolding, more rambling about how no progress is to be made if Dan keeps rejecting his new body, keeps hesitating to use it, keeps himself holed up in his room-

Dan huffs and rushes off, guitar discarded with a graceless toss, clattering against the floor with a reverb of wood on concrete.

_“Just play the tape.”_

It itches.

_“Just play the guitar.”_

It **burns**.

Once everyone is asleep, Dan returns to the room. He exhales through his nose as he picks up the instrument from the floor. The room should feel empty with only him standing there.

It doesn’t.

The cold of the smooth floor surface grounds him. His fingers lay against the strings and make a muted chord. He fishes the pick out and lifts it towards the body of the guitar.

He plays the guitar.

And it fills the space around him like a group of friends, softly encouraging him.

“Just play the tape.”

Dan nods firmly.

He plays the tape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a fic given as a gift, but I ended up really liking it. 
> 
> This was written to "Analog Boy" by DBMK hence the title!
> 
> Feel free to leave thoughts in the comments. Thank you so much for reading!


	6. On The Train Ride Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first months of returning home are rough, extremely so. It takes a long while before he can go out on his own again.

The first months of returning home are rough, extremely so. Melody’s “errands” certainly make it easier to transition back to daily life, but Dan still can’t shake the City from his bones. His popping joints feel artificial and mechanical at times, and the heavy breathing following it only makes Clara more concerned.

It takes a long while before he can go out on his own again.

It’s late March when he finally starts working. Riding the subway makes him feel normal, probably something to do with the strangers packed together, all far weirder than the sound engineer in his ratty old jeans (they aren’t skinny, even if Clara suggests otherwise).

The sky is overcast- Dan made sure to wear a rain coat and Clara made sure he brought an umbrella (he doubts he’ll use it, but he smiles at her concern).

Dan is the only one in the studio that day. Hours pass by with little to no snags. He submits the files then heads back out, onto the streets. As he stands at the intersection, he feels a drop of rain hit the top of his shoe. The pavement darkens with moisture as he tugs his hood over his messy hair. A few pedestrians duck under awnings, others quickly pulling out ponchos and coats and umbrellas. The sidewalk becomes a dark sea of vinyl, nylon, and polyester; the crowd rushes by as people retreat into nearby stores and cafes.

It’s not raining, it’s pouring. Dan is too slow in opening his umbrella and his denim is soaked through. He should be upset or uncomfortable, he thinks.

Instead, a grin pulls at his lips as he lets the umbrella fall to the ground. Each heavy drop of rain hitting his skin makes him feel so alive.

He’s really here. He’s here, alive, happy, human.

Not once did he ever think he’d be so grateful to have flesh, to have skin closed over his organs protecting from air, debris, and water (his joints, no longer exposed and welded together with metal and fiberglass). His arms extend outward and the weather douses him with pelting rain.

Somewhere in the rumble of storm clouds and disgruntled crowds, he can register the sound of his laughter. His arms wrap around himself in a solo embrace. Dan shuffles into the closest bodega and his cheeks flush as he moves squeakily across the tiled floor.

The cheap coffee reeks of artificial sweetener and the heat seeps through the thin paper cup. No one blinks an eye when he drips on the counter as he passes over the change for a drink and a donut. He eats on the train home, clutching the cappuccino tightly, shivering partially from the chill, but mostly from the chuckles that make his entire body shudder.

He drops his key trying to unlock the apartment door due to the violent trembles. Luckily, his roommate hears the rattle of the knob and opens it for him. She eyes his drowned rat appearance and shakes her head silently.

Clara smirks, letting out an amused sigh.

“Welcome home, Dan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love when it rains in the city, even if it makes public transport a muggy and smelly experience. I like romanticizing the small things and I think Dan deserves some time alone just feeling like a human being. 
> 
> Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
